Forgiveness
by mandassina
Summary: Jack and Ianto share a significant look at the end of “Cyberwoman.” They share another in Countrycide. This story is about the moments they share in the intervening time.


**Disclaimer:**_ Torchwood_, its characters and settings are property of Russell T. Davies and BBC Wales. This story was written for entertainment only and not for profit.

**Forgiveness**

"I want you to come see me before you leave today," Jack said as he passed Ianto on his way from the boardroom to his office.

Immediately Ianto's guts turned to burning pitch. _This is how it ends then_, he thought. _I clean up after them one last time and he kicks me out. God, I hope he retcons me, takes away everything Torchwood. _He refused to consider the alternatives. He couldn't bear the thought of being forced back into a normal life with his memories intact, and he was honestly afraid he would welcome death too easily. Then he felt a soft sob bubble up inside of him. _Lisa, I'm sorry, but it hurts too much to remember. If I don't have this place to look after, I'll fall apart._

Swallowing down his emotions and blinking away the tears, Ianto tied the straining bin bag shut and went off to collect his scrubbing gloves and a bucket of hot, soapy water. It was time to start washing away the blood.

~ o ~

Jack sat in his office, staring at the paperwork he couldn't seem to finish. Gwen's words kept rolling through his head.

"All that deception. Because he couldn't bear to live without her."

_Was there any truth to what he said? Did he really mean any of it, or was it all just a ploy to protect Lisa?_

"So have you ever loved anyone, that much?"

_I used to think so, but now I'm not sure. The lengths he was willing to go. The risks he was willing to take. But he's so young. Did he really understand the magnitude of what he was doing? If he did, how could he do it?_

"I thought, just for a moment, I thought maybe you could die after all."

_So did I, but not from her attack. I trusted him. I thought he was content here. I thought he needed time to heal after what he saw at Canary Wharf. I thought he wanted . . . No, he never said that. He was just obliging, and I let myself believe it meant more than it did. If I had known about Lisa . . ._

_Would I have killed her anyway? I'd like to think I would have tried to help if I could have gotten to her before she went rampaging through the Hub, but I don't know what I might have done. And if I don't know, how can I blame him for not trusting me? After what he did, can I ever trust him again?_

He looked down and the beautiful, sad young man methodically cleaning up the Hub, and felt a terrible, burning pain in his chest. _I have to be careful now not to make the same mistake he did._

~ o ~

Ianto set the cup of coffee down and stood before Jack's desk, hoping the captain couldn't see how his legs were trembling. Jack gave the steaming mug a wary look and then looked up at Ianto. Despite everything, the Welshman couldn't contain a slightly amused smirk. "It's not drugged or poisoned," he said.

Jack nodded, but he didn't take a sip. Ianto waited a few more moments, but eventually the silence became oppressive. He just wanted to get it over.

"So, what now?"

Jack snorted a laugh, but he didn't sound particularly amused. "You've got a lot of nerve," he said, coming to stand before the younger man, invading his personal space. Sneering at Ianto, he hissed, "You should be asking, 'Why am I still alive?'"

Ianto leaned back slightly from the venom in his tone, but didn't quite step away. He swallowed audibly several times, and then just barely managed to speak. "I have been wondering, but didn't want to risk making you reconsider your decision, sir," he admitted.

"_Don't_ call me that," Jack growled. Ianto pressed his lips together and lowered his gaze as Jack walked a circle around him. "You wormed your way into my employ, hid a cyber-conversion unit and a half converted cyberwoman . . ."

"Lisa!" Ianto snapped. "Her name was Lisa!"

"_I don't bloody care!" _Jack roared in his ear, and Ianto flinched. Jack took a couple of breaths to calm himself and said, "It wasn't Lisa when I met it. It was something intent on hurting my friends and conquering the world. Whoever it was before that was gone by then."

"You don't understand," Ianto said, struggling to reign in his tears. "You could never understand unless you loved someone the way I loved her."

"What makes you think I haven't?" Jack demanded heatedly. "What makes you think I haven't had to face the same decision you couldn't make last night?"

"If you had, you never would have been able to kill the person you loved," Ianto said.

"Maybe there was someone to do it for me, like I had to do for you," Jack suggested.

Ianto listened carefully, but he couldn't tell from Jack's tone whether he'd actually had a similar experience or was just speaking hypothetically. He was desperate for any clue that would help him prepare for his eventual fate.

"Was there anything about you that was real?" Jack asked, his tone as deceptively casual as his body language when he leaned against the edge of the desk.

"Wh-What do you mean?" Ianto stammered in confusion.

Jack shrugged. "The compassion you showed the Weevils, all your work in the archives, the way you looked after us all never expecting a word of gratitude, complimenting my clothes, flirting and making jokes about harassment, the affection you . . . showed the pterodactyl, all of that stuff. Did you mean any of it, or was it all just what you had to do to look after Lisa."

Ianto dropped his gaze. "Everything I did was for Lisa," he said quietly, and pressed his lips together in a tight line.

"I see. So, you were a complete fraud."

Ianto didn't reply.

"All right then, back to your question. 'What now?'" Jack returned to his seat, took a sip of coffee and cocked an eyebrow at Ianto. "You're charming, deceitful, and too bloody clever to go back to drifting from one menial job to another," he said. "I had poor Tosh up all night slogging through what we could salvage of Torchwood One's computer data after Canary Wharf, so I know you were more than a junior researcher. You're pretty damned good with computers, too, to have been able to hack into the scrap that remained of their data base and hide the truth about yourself. Retconning you and dumping you somewhere would be a tragic waste of potential."

Ianto kept his mouth shut and his gaze fixed on a spot on the front edge of Jack's desk. He worked hard to control his breathing. He would not get his hopes up. He didn't even know what he would hope for.

"And I can't just turn you loose knowing what you know," Jack continued, seemingly oblivious to the internal war going on inside the younger man's heart. "I imagine you probably hate me for what I had to do. Maybe you always will. That makes you far too dangerous as a potential enemy to leave at large. And you're too valuable a commodity to just lock you up in the cells."

Jack fell silent for a long time, so long that Ianto had to speak. "So, you're going to execute me after all. I'm not surprised you wanted me to clean the place up first."

Jack shook his head. "I'm not a cold blooded killer."

"Then what, Jack?" Ianto demanded anxiously. "What are you going to do with me?"

"Watch you," Jack said simply. "You'll stay here and work for me, try to win the team's trust back, try like hell to win mine, and I'll keep an eye on you, at least until I decide whether you can be trusted."

"And if you decide I can't?"

"We retcon you all the way back to toilet training and dump you off somewhere in the middle of Eastern Europe."

Memories of Lisa, of a trip she had wanted them to take, swam in his mind, and in a voice choked with tears, he asked, "What makes you think I wouldn't welcome that?"

Jack looked at him sadly and said, "This isn't about punishing you, Ianto, it's about keeping the rest of us safe."

Ianto gasped a few times, then held his breath until he regained control. In a deceptively calm voice, he asked, "Do I have any other options?"

"No," Jack told him, gently but firmly. "I own you now. This job is your life until I say otherwise. Tosh will set the Hub's internal sensors to monitor your vital signs. You will check in with me when you report to work and check out with me when you go home. If you need to go outside of the Hub or the tourist office alone during the work day, you will inform me or whoever is in charge before you go. When you leave this facility, you will carry your mobile at all times. If you need to run errands, you will submit an itinerary in advance. If you deviate from that itinerary without contacting with me, I will come find you, personally. If you need to leave the Cardiff city limits, you will apply for permission and you will accept the escort I assign you without complaint. If you drop off the sensors for even a moment, an alarm on my wrist strap will let me know and I will come find you. No more hiding. No more secrets. I will be watching you around the clock."

Ianto couldn't raise a single objection. He was still alive, and he still had something to help him keep body and soul together. It was more than he'd dared hope for. He nodded slightly and said, "Understood."

If Jack was surprised by his acquiescence, he didn't show it. "Good. Now, do you have anything else to say for yourself?"

Ianto nodded, and Jack waited patiently while he collected his thoughts. Finally he licked his dry lips and said, "I'm sorry I deceived you and used you. I'm sorry people were endangered and hurt . . . and k-killed." He felt tears well up and had to close his eyes until they subsided. "I'm sorry . . . _I _hurt you, Jack. I'm sorry for all the awful things that happened, but I loved Lisa, and I'm _not_ sorry I tried to help her."

Jack stared at him for a long moment. "I wouldn't expect you to be," he finally said. "Apology accepted. I forgive you."

Ianto swallowed hard and nodded his appreciation. "And I will try to forgive you."

~ o ~

Jack found Ianto in the storage room. He didn't have to look around to know who it was. No one else would come to him down here, and when Jack got close enough, Ianto could identify him by his unique scent.

"You didn't tell me you were coming down here," Jack said softly as he placed a hand on the younger man's shoulder.

Moving away from Jack's touch, Ianto crouched down to swap the fresh bouquet for the spent flowers. "You're monitoring me night and day, and you never indicated that I needed your permission to move about inside the Hub," he said.

"No, I didn't," Jack agreed. "But I was hoping you would tell me."

"Why would I?" Ianto asked, carefully arranging the flowers. "You barely acknowledge my presence. Why would you care what I do?"

Jack knelt beside him. "Because I do care, Ianto. I'm sorry you couldn't come to me before. I'd like to think I would have tried to help Lisa if I had known about her before she . . ." Jack stopped himself. He didn't need to say what she had done, especially not to Ianto. "I don't want this place to be like Torchwood London where every potential ally is also a possible informer. If you get into trouble like that again, I want you to be able to trust me."

"Then show some bloody interest!" Ianto demanded heatedly, as he dashed away some unexpected tears. "Ask me a question about myself."

At a loss, Jack blurted the first question that came to his mind. "How did you and Lisa meet?"

Ianto laughed softly. "She used to come into the pastry shop where I was working, three, four, sometimes five days a week. She was a frightfully messy eater, always dropping her food, spilling her drink, and calling me to come over and clean it up. Finally, one day I commented on her clumsiness. As dark as she was I could still see her blush when she said, 'I was trying to get you to notice me, you git!'"

Jack chuckled, and when Ianto took a seat on the floor, Jack sat down beside him.

"She fled the shop and I ran after her. Didn't spare a thought for my boss or the morning rush. When I finally caught up with her, I told her I had noticed her, some time ago, so she didn't have to keep wasting her money on pastries and coffee she was just going to throw on the floor. She asked me why I'd never asked her out, and I told her she wouldn't want to date me. I was just a nobody."

"I hope she set you straight on that," Jack said.

"Oh, she did," Ianto said with a nod and a grin. "Right there at the bus stop. Gave me such a telling off some old lady handed me the movie section right out of her newspaper and wished me luck." He drew a great, shuddering breath and asked, "Why are you here, Jack?"

"Because you shouldn't have to mourn alone."

Ianto drew his knees up to his chest and sat there rocking, silent sobs making his whole body shake. This time, he didn't pull away when Jack put an arm around his shoulders.

~ o ~

"I'm going home now, sir," Ianto said, standing just outside the doorway to Jack's office.

Jack glanced up from his paperwork and said, "Well, go on then. I told you over a week ago that you don't have to keep checking out with me anymore, Ianto."

"I . . . I know that, sir. I've . . . been hoping you'd ask me to stay and talk a while."

Now Jack looked at him with avid curiosity. He had been making more of an effort the past few weeks to express an interest in each of his employees' lives, but except for Gwen he would never have expected one of them to stick around for a chat, least of all Ianto. Closing the file he had been working on, he waved Ianto toward the seat across the desk from him and said, "All you ever have to do is ask."

Ianto gave a small nod of acknowledgement and moved into the room to take the offered seat. Jack stared at him a moment longer, and something told him the young man could do with a stiff drink. So he got up and went over to the side table that held the decanter and glasses he brought out whenever they had a particularly rough day and needed something to settle their nerves. He poured three fingers for Ianto and just one for himself. Alcohol didn't do much for him anymore, and he had the feeling Ianto would benefit from the extra portion.

Jack handed Ianto his glass and then moved to sit behind his desk again. He made a show of moving the folder he had been perusing off to the side as Ianto gulped his drink.

"Easy there," he advised. "That stuff's pretty potent. You don't want it hitting you all at once. Sip it."

Ianto nodded, and for a long while just sat there nursing his drink. Jack was content to watch him for as long as it took for him to find the nerve to say what he had to say. He had missed flirting with Ianto, their banter and innuendo and the other things they had played at in private, but if the young man had only done that to protect Lisa, Jack didn't want to pressure him into carrying on with something he didn't want to do.

"Do you remember the day after . . ." Ianto tailed off. It didn't seem wise to say 'my half-converted cyber girlfriend tried to use the Hub as a base to take over the world.' "You forgave me . . . for what I'd done."

Jack nodded. "I remember."

"And I said I would try to forgive you," Ianto continued.

"Yes. I recall that," Jack said.

"Well, I have . . . forgiven you, I mean," Ianto finished in a rush before Jack had to ask whether he had merely tried and failed or actually succeeded in forgiving him.

Jack could feel himself grinning. He didn't know until that moment how much it would mean to him to hear those words. Now he just wanted to kiss the younger man, a big, sloppy, wet, full-on-the-mouth kiss. Instead, he sipped his drink and said, "Thank you, Ianto. It means a lot to me to know that."

Ianto frowned at him and said, "You don't even know what for, do you?"

The amused tone perplexed Jack almost as much as the question. "Well, I guess I just assumed it was for shooting . . . Lisa." Using her name made what he had been forced to do so much more horrible.

Ianto shook his head. "Not really," he said. "Yes, I was hurt and angry, but I didn't blame you for that. When I saw that poor girl, what . . . the cyberwoman had done to her, I knew it wasn't Lisa anymore. It was just using Lisa's memories to get to me. I need you to understand. She was still Lisa when I brought her here, and maybe if I had asked you for help in the beginning things wouldn't have gone as wrong as they did." Aware that his voice had taken on a tearful tone, Ianto stopped, cleared his throat, and sipped his drink.

"Again, I'm sorry I wasn't the kind of boss you could come to when you needed help," Jack said, and Ianto knew he meant it.

Shaking his head, the Welshman said, "You don't have to apologize for that, Jack. I worked very hard to hide the truth from you. If I had put as much effort into convincing you to help her before everything went so wrong . . ." He stopped for a moment, fighting down the memories of that horrible night. "Anyway, I can't really blame you for that, despite what I said. I'd seen enough of how you worked to know this place doesn't operate like Canary Wharf."

"Ianto, I'm sorry if I'm being dense," Jack said. "But if it's not killing Lisa and it's not letting you down when you needed help, for what, exactly, am I being forgiven?"

"Do you remember when I told you everything I had done had been for Lisa?"

"Yes," Jack nodded. It was all he would say on the matter. He would never tell the Ianto how much that particular revelation had hurt. Ianto hadn't done it to hurt him, he had been protecting the woman he loved. Jack had no doubt that the deception and philandering had been difficult for the young man. Ianto wasn't the kind of person to intentionally cause others pain.

"Well, that's not to say that I didn't get something out of it, too," Ianto explained.

Jack worked hard to school his features into a mask of simple concern, but he couldn't completely stop his eyebrows from quirking up in surprise at that revelation. And try as he might, he couldn't stop something small and strange and wonderful from swelling in his heart.

"For a while, I needed to blame you, Jack. I needed it to be your fault in order to convince myself that I wasn't being an unfaithful bastard to the woman I loved," Ianto explained. "I needed to believe that I wouldn't have felt anything for you if you hadn't been so . . . encouraging."

"So, you're forgiving me for . . . seducing you?" Jack asked, feeling a little confused because he now realized that it hadn't really happened that way at all.

"Not exactly," Ianto said with a shake of his head. "I . . . I'm forgiving you for making it so easy to betray Lisa and so painful to deceive you."

"Ahhhh, I see," Jack said, standing now and coming around the desk. "So, now all you have left to do is to forgive yourself," he said.

"Myself?" Ianto parroted as if the thought had never occurred to him.

"Yes, yourself, Ianto," Jack insisted. "It's not in your nature to hurt anyone on purpose. You were doing what you felt you had to do to help someone you loved. I realized that and forgave you the day after. Now you need to accept it and forgive yourself."

Ianto sat staring at him, his mouth slightly open and looking a little perplexed, and Jack could restrain himself no more. Leaning over, he slid a hand through the Welshman's short, dark hair and cupped the back of his head to pull him gently forward. He pressed his mouth over those soft, lush lips, and chuckled softly when he heard Ianto's glass smash to the floor. For a Jack Harkness kiss, it was really quite chaste, his tongue flickering over and between Ianto's barely parted lips, but never going past the teeth. As they parted, he nipped at the lower lip gently and sucked on it for a moment before he broke away completely.

"Anytime you want to talk, Ianto, you know where to find me," he promised huskily. Then he stepped back and was all business. "Now, would you mind helping me load some gear into the SUV? The others don't know it yet, but we're going camping tomorrow."

_**The end**__**.**_


End file.
